When I retort, “Why do you care if I carry my purse,” he questions what I keep in it. He remarks on its size and weight.

He accuses it of slowing me down. He accuses me of trying to keep up with it. I think he feels like he’s competing with it. Whatever his reasons, he’s purse-plexed about why my purse is so heavy if the only thing in it I ever use is a tube of lipstick.

It agitates him to see my purse hanging from my arm. For him, it’s purse-onal.

“I like the character of Belle,” said Duncan, a 13 year-old who is playing the role in Musical Theatre Workshops’ production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at 2 and 7 p.m., Saturday, April 18, at Greenbrier High School. “She’s brave, and she’s strong. I love that about her character. She’s my favorite Disney princess.”

Director Mickey Lubeck has produced several of the Disney musicals through her studio, but she had waited to do Beauty and the Beast.

When Natalie Gibson begins the researching and recruiting authors to speak at the Columbia County Library, she brings in writers with different perspectives and genres.

This time around, the library’s reference services manager says she has discovered that abundance of perspective in a single author.

On April 23, the library will feature the multi-faceted Frances Mayes, best known for writing the novel on the New York Times’ bestseller list Under the Tuscan Sun, which has since been made into a major motion picture.

With our traditional last frost date of March 15, give or take a few weeks, many people around town are ready to start planting summer vegetable gardens. In the past 15 years, we have had two instances where the frost date has exceeded the two week grace period we add.

Those dates were April 8, 2007 at 28 degrees and April 9, 2000 at 30 degrees. Looking at the projected weather for the rest of April we should only see low 50s, so now is the time to start planting.